The hidden cost of a deal with Iran — and the Pope’s warning about AI

[00:00:00]So we can bemoone this regime. Um 80% of Iranians do bemoone this regime and are frankly many of them really disappointed to see what has come out of this. But you can't change it from the outside.

[00:00:22]Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 29th of May 2026. I'm Rodard Griffith, chair of the Monk Debates, joined remotely by Janice Gestein, my co-host. Hey, Janice. How's it going?

[00:00:35]>> It's going well. The sun is shining um after what it seems like day after day after day after day after rain. So, it is all good.

[00:00:45]>> It is all good. Let's talk about uh this again um pingpong week of uh of negotiation between Iran and the United States. We can start to unpack some of the details as we go, but just to begin at a kind of 30,000 ft level, Janice, it seems as if we could be on the cusp of a deal which at the end of the day looks really more like an extension of the ceasefire for a period of time where both Iran and the United States clearly have interests in um letting the uh stopper out of the pressure valve that has become the Straits of Hermos. For Iran, that means they're not getting imports into the country, into their ports, uh causing a lot of inflation. Uh they're also not getting their oil out, which in a matter of weeks could start damaging permanently their oil fields.

[00:01:37]>> Yeah.

[00:01:38]>> Here, Trump's interests and the Ayatollas are aligned in so far as uh he's facing uh higher gas prices at home going into the summer driving season. It all seems Janice like a big cankicking exercise on the part of both of these protagonists with the big difficult issues most notably Iran's nuclear program and the future of the Straits of Permuse delayed and deferred until later. Do I have that right?

[00:02:07]>> You have it right. But let me just put a slightly more optimistic spin on this and I'm going to start where you started. uh both of them are running out of time uh and that's why I think we are closer to what we would call a framework agreement but that framework a little more in it um and they're fighting about the details of how you open the straits of Hormuz but there there's an agreement that they're going to open the straits of Hormuz right so that's progress secondly they're arguing fiercely about Iran's nuclear program but what they've there's a consensus now this one less written down that Iran will reiterate its ritual statement we will not we will not okay I don't have to finish the sentence on that one but beyond that that they are going to turn over to turn over or um reduce um the enriched ur nuclear uranium so that it cannot be used to break out for a bomb They're going to do it one way or another. Iran is insisting that it be done at home inside Iran um with inspectors. The United States wants it shipped out. But buried in all that noise is that one ton of enriched uranium is going to be um no longer available as enriched uranium to allow for breakouts to the bomb. So there's not nothing there. Um, >> it's a pretty thin rule though, Janice, is it not for the president of the United States? I mean, he started this war with the lofty objective of regime change. that was then downshifted to uh ending Iran's support for proxies uh permanently crippling disabling its ballistic missile program uh forever precluding it uh for the development uh of a of a nuclear weapon regardless of what pledges it was to actually remove the structural capacity beyond stocks of enriched uranium to the actual enrichment itself. So much of that, Janice, now seems to be out the window. And on top of it, it looks like Iran will receive, if this, if rumors of thisou are correct. $12 billion or more of funds released, uh, sanction relief, uh, you know, feathered in, I guess, as as the strait reopens and if and when discussions on on the nuclear program, you know, proceed according to to uh to, you know, mutual perceptions of of where and when and how uh they should happen in the 30 to to 60 days. I mean, Janice, this is you you have to get a particle accelerator out to try to find the kind of traces of of the initial ambition that this administration had for this war versus where this settlement seems to be landing.

[00:05:08]>> Yeah. You know, Redard, um I never thought regime change was very likely, so I guess I just applied a discount factor to it. Um the second big one limiting the ballistic missile program never on red. You could ask for it but it was never going to happen because that is Iran's as we've seen principle measure um of defense and why would they give that up? That is actually asking Iran to disarm itself. I never thought that was very likely and ask it to support stop supporting its proxies.

[00:05:49]Well, that that is, you know, the prerogative of any state that it can in fact um support its proxies and do what it wants. The key issue here was always the nuclear program, the enriched uranium. What hasn't been dealt with Raj and we'll have to see how this goes. the vast number of highly efficient centrifuges that Iran has, some of them accounted for and some of them I think very likely in underground facilities that inspectors have never seen. At the end of all this, Iran's nuclear program, its capacity to make a nuclear bomb is effectively dismantled either because inspectors will really be there on the ground, have a capacity for surprise inspection and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium is no longer operative.

[00:06:47]To me, that's a big game. Could they have gotten it at the negotiating table?

[00:06:52]I think is a really telling question because the the United States and New Zealand made a decision to go to war and that decision if you could make a convincing case that if they let those negotiations go forward they would have achieved that objective then this war is not only a war of choice but it's an unnecessary war. It's a counterfactual. How will we ever know?

[00:07:17]But Jan Janice, I think by any measurement uh you could argue despite, you know, the 5,000 or more strikes in Iran uh during um the actual war itself, this regime is now emerging stronger. it uh it has consolidated unfortunately the uh the theocracy uh both both the religious elements in in the succession to the new Ayatollah and and the re and the uh revolutionary guard um emerge more politically powerful than ever. Uh the intimidation of the population continues uh unabated. there seems to be little or no sign of uh some kind of popular uprising on the streets of Tran or elsewhere. And uh we now have uh Iran doing what what I think is is shocking to many observers, which is reestablishing strategic deterrence over the United States, the world's superpower by effectively during this period of time closing the straits of Hermos, indicating that in any future scenario, an attack of Israel on Iran, uh a subsequent uh let's say breakdown in these negotiations over the 30 to 60 days that they've retained the option to to close that straight and throw the the world's economy and uh prices and inflation into uh the very spiral that you know uh western governments around the world are just trying to dig themselves out of postcoid. So from a again from a 30,000 ft perspective, this this uh you know,000 kilos or less of uh of enriched uranium is starting to come with a with a pretty big strategic price tag in terms of where we end this war if we do over the next 30 to 60 days and Iran's relative position now versus three months ago.

[00:09:16]You know, let me make let let me um just make a slightly different argument uh rather than you will let me know what you think of it. Uh yesterday I read the allegedly state you know an alleged statement by Mosha Bakham which he released inside Iran to celebrate an anniversary and you know from a supreme leader if in fact it's from him because he has not appeared he is still in hiding and nobody has seen him but if he is still alive and he wrote that statement it was in many ways case um a very odd statement from the supreme leader and it was all about the economy, the Iranian economy and what the government owed the Iranian people. It was about productivity. It was about growth. It was about restoring Iranians um opportunity to have a decent livelihood.

[00:10:18]It was it was the most um you know consumer oriented statement you could imagine from a supreme leader. Let me just put it to you that way. So whether most of wrote that or not, it doesn't matter. What it really tells you is this government is acutely aware of how fragile its relationship is with the Iranian public that it's got to do something about addressing really deep sources of grievance which have been hugely exaggerated as a result of this war. There are millions of Iranians who are unemployed at this point. That's why that, you know, the $12 billion is crucial because we don't have good data on where their foreign exchange reserves are now. But we do know that everything they exported, leave aside oil, but everything else they exported, that's been destroyed and it will take years to recover. So yes, they're stronger because they exercise their right to and the capacity to control the straits, but this is a very weak regime now. Roger.

[00:11:30]>> Yes. Also murdered 35,000 of their own citizens in the >> pace of of 48 hours. So you know, if I if I if I if I if you sense I have a bit of cross stuck in my throat, it's that >> this is a horrific horrible regime. uh a pariah state. Um it has engaged uh the president is right. It's engaged uh its critics are right. It's engaged in decades of international terrorism abroad. It's destabilized the region through its proxies. it it was pursuing a a a nuclear weapon and um you know it's repeatedly over over decades sporadically decided in this case most recently the worst uh the worst case scenario to kill tens of thousands of its citizens in indiscriminately by its security forces by rushing into crowds and shooting them dead with uh with silenced pistols and automatic rifles.

[00:12:26]And and yet here we are with with a regime that >> um yes has been damaged. Who wouldn't be damaged if you had 5,000 uh Israeli and American bombs dropped on your economy?

[00:12:38]What would the Canadian economy more >> look like in that scenario? But here they are uh you know un in inarguably um with greater geopolitical prominence and and leverage with a status and a standing in the region visav the Gulf States and globally visav China their importance increasingly now to China as a as a new uh you know stick that it can poke and twist into the side of uh Europe and and the western democracies And um you know Vladimir Putin is selling oil uh with uh with a American permission having you know this war uh basically forced the administration into allowing uh Russia's illegal trade in oil uh to flourish for the last 90 days.

[00:13:30]I mean all the all the bad guys to me have won for the last 3 months. I'm getting a little tired here that the good guys don't seem to be notching any any scores up on the board.

[00:13:43]>> Well, you know, you're absolutely right in your description of this regime, and I would go further, Roger. The number of executions inside Iran, you remember this started in January with Donald Trump warning them not to kill anybody, the number of executions is way up inside Iran as well. So, uh, um, there's no question. But the bigger question really is how do you change this regime?

[00:14:11]You can't do it by military means from the outside. You simply cannot. And how long um does the United States live with the myth that you can send your military forces into a country um inflict significant punishment and that will be enough to overthrow a regime. It doesn't work except you know in a Venezuela in a small country where they didn't overthrow the regime even then they just changed the people at the top. So we can bemoone this regime. Um I'm 80% of Iranians do bemoone this regime and are frankly many of them really disappointed to see what has come out of this but you can't change it from the outside and it was foolish ever to think you could >> yeah I I don't know Mike Pompeo our debater was on our main stage last week made some news over the weekend a chorus of voices emerging to criticize thisou um >> and again I I don't >> but what's the option I I I you and I have discussed this before. Normally great powers um don't lose and can't lose and and the second is as important as the first and in some cases it forces uh horrible situations like um Vladimir Putin's um you know criminal war on on Ukraine with with thousands of of tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead on each side.

[00:15:43]But he's playing to to the rules of of great powers who who need to sustain uh their power, who need to um you know recover in a sense from the from the loss. And I think America has experienced a loss of strategic deterrence in in how Iran has now emerged from this war and how China will look at this visa v Taiwan or how Russia maybe is looking at NATO and other other NATO countries. American power is less in the world today than it was 90 years ago. Normally, historically, you know this as an academic, in these types of situations, great powers can't lose and don't lose. And and yes, it it involves Oh my god, the Dow Jones being down 10% or my god, it involves some kind of sacrifice on the part of the power who in many cases makes a miscalculation, starts a war maybe that they shouldn't have, ends up in a situation where they where they are losing uh deterrence, but they go on to reestablish that deterrence. I think there is a credible argument that this war should not end, that uh the Iranian regime should be uh pushed through another round of conflict uh to see whether in fact uh either better terms for a deal could emerge, one that would would constrain this regime in bigger ways that might encourage political changes on its own um visav its own leaders to have uh a deal on the other side of another round of this conflict. No one likes conflict Janice but we are fooling ourselves if we think that thisou doesn't contain within it a bigger butcher bill related to geopolitical stability in the world today and um you know America's inability now to credibly project force uh deterrence and stability um as a result of it all.

[00:17:45]Let me make a different argument, Rogers. Uh, look, Russia thought it was going to get the job done in Ukraine in three days. Donald Trump thought he was going to get the job done in Iran in 3 days. They were both wrong. Russia dug in, as you said, it may still lose. In fact, you know, if anything, the momentum on the battlefield has shifted the other way. The very best that Russia is going to get out of this, at the very best, it's going to fight to a draw and it will have a million and a half Russians killed or wounded. Vietnam took how many years? Um, over a decade. Uh, Afghanistan even longer. Donald Trump, I don't think he knows he lost, but he knows he's not winning and he's cutting his losses. And in fact, the United States recovered from Vietnam. It remained a great power.

[00:18:40]It recovered from Afghanistan. And that humiliating withdrawal under Joe Biden and remained a great power. So this I do not believe fundamentally under the United States. It's a three-month war.

[00:18:55]It will be yesterday's news. H. And the United States has demonstrated that it has military machine that is so precise and so fearsome that neither China nor Russia can approach it. There's an argument to be made for ending this war because you cannot change this regime with yet another go at it.

[00:19:19]>> Janice, we'll leave the conversation there and move on to the second half of the show where we convene uh with our monk donors. Uh if you'd like to get uh all of our premium and audio and video content, uh you can do that by becoming uh a donor for as little as 50 cents a week. Uh all kinds of different membership packages that meet your needs. If you're into podcasts, we've got something for you. Live events.

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